Canada can’t be the sole saviour of the world’s unfortunate

Children walk down a road in Red Sucker Lake First Nation, July 2010. Photo: Joe Bryksa, Winnipeg Free Press.

December 2017

Can we have an honest conversation here? I mean a really honest conversation about the immigration and refugee issues Canada faces and how it’s putting a strain on our already strained social and health care services?

While we’ve always had immigration and refugee applicants, the situation has become much worse since our “Dear Leader,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, carelessly and stupidly invited the world to come to Canada in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump clamping down on immigrants/refugees in the United States. This is of course on top of those he rushed through the system with his equally stupid virtue-signalling, selfie-taking refugee rush when he first took office.

Yes, Canada should absolutely be an open and welcoming country for those who are escaping conflict and persecution around the world, or simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

The point those progressives who are no doubt calling me a racist for even expressing this opinion seem to miss is at what point does Canada have to say we can’t accommodate any more people at this time because our resources are strained to the limit? This includes immigration applicants with known serious medical issues that will further strain those limited resources.

At what point does trying to help everyone result in no one receiving adequate medical treatment or social services?

We have First Nations communities across Canada without safe drinking water, or even running water, that have housing and schools that would be inadequate even in a third-world country and crumbling infrastructure (although that admittedly presents another issue no one wants to push: where is all the money going that the Feds send out to these communities?).

We have people sleeping on the streets, some of whom suffer from mental illnesses that are going untreated due to a lack of health care funding.

We have children going to school without breakfast or having to rely on school breakfast programs. We have children who are without proper clothing, especially in the winter months and those who won’t be getting any toys from Santa this Christmas.

We have overcrowded hospitals with people sleeping on stretchers in the hallways for days on end, long waiting lists for life-saving surgeries and patients with physical or mental injuries who are discharged early or denied proper service because we just don’t have enough money to go around.

We have people waiting for years to get into subsidized housing and little money to repair the older subsidized residences that are crumbling.

We have people who have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on needed medication and supplies, like diabetics, because their workplace benefits don’t cover the medicine, if they even have workplace benefits in the first place. Even a one-time only prescription can be a financial strain on those without a healthcare plan.

Unless you have workplace benefits that cover dental expenses, families can find themselves either shelling out thousands of dollars per year for dental care or going without proper care. For those who don’t know, poor dental health can lead to numerous general health problems which then put even more strain on the health-care system.

Poor vision care can have a big impact on a person’s quality of life, something which isn’t covered by our socialized health-care system either.

Some have even argued that necessary things like feminine hygiene products should be covered by health-care systems.

If Canada had money to burn, providing medical and dental expenses through your provincial health-care system would make a big difference to a lot of people. Sure there are already programs in place to assist the economically disadvantaged, but just imagine how many more could benefit if our governments didn’t recklessly and needlessly overburden the country’s health and social services.

If it weren’t for the hard work and generosity of volunteer community groups (sometimes assisted by generous corporate donations) operating “soup kitchens”, food banks and emergency shelter programs, the situation for vulnerable groups would be much worse.

I’m not in any way saying we shouldn’t allow immigrants or refugees into Canada; far from it. We should be bringing in more people from needed professions like doctors, along with making it easier and quicker for foreign trained professionals to become qualified in this country.

Yes, it’s absolutely heartbreaking seeing news clips of children in war-torn countries like Syria living in tented refugee camps and dodging bullets and bombs. The right thing to do is to help people facing persecution and death in their home countries, but we have vulnerable people already in this country who are just as needy and deserving of our help.

By not properly screening those who wish to settle in Canada because the Customs and Border Services Agency (CBSA) is strained to the limit, we are risking the safety of those same refugees/immigrants by admitting to Canada the same dangerous people and/or ideologies they were trying to escape from in their home countries in the first place. Radical groups like ISIS have made it clear that they are hiding sleeper agents among the refugees.

Canada simply can’t be the saviour of the world’s less fortunate when we have so many in need here already. Yes it’s great that we try, but when it’s done for political reasons like the Syrian refugee rush, it creates more problems than it solves.

Not that I’m trying to reignite that debate, but besides the fact that Martin Bolduc, Program Branch Vice-President with CBSA, admitted to Member of Parliament Larry Miller in a Parliamentary committee hearing that the vast majority of the Syrian refugees admitted to Canada in late 2015 weren’t in housed in refugee camps but were actually living in apartments (with jobs and schools for their children) in safe Muslim countries like Lebanon and Egypt, very few of those admitted to Canada at that time were from known persecuted groups like Arab Christians and Yazidis (people we really should be helping).

Yes I’m aware that immigration and refugees aren’t the only reason Canada has a $17.8 billion dollar deficit and our social and medical systems are strained but by not addressing this issue, we are making a bad situation even worse.

Of course we should also address all the other waste in government spending too.

About the author

Bruce Forsyth

Bruce Forsyth served in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve for 13 years (1987-2000). He served with units in Toronto, Hamilton & Windsor and worked or trained at CFB Esquimalt, CFB Halifax, CFB Petawawa, CFB Kingston, CFB Toronto, Camp Borden, The Burwash Training Area and LFCA Training Centre Meaford.

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About the Author

Bruce Forsyth served in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve for 13 years (1987-2000). He served with units in Toronto, Hamilton & Windsor and worked or trained at CFB Esquimalt, CFB Halifax, CFB Petawawa, CFB Kingston, CFB Toronto, Camp Borden, The Burwash Training Area and LFCA Training Centre Meaford.